A US federal lawsuit alleges that the bodies of two men who died in Alabama state prisons were stripped of their hearts and other organs when they were returned to their families.
The family of Brandon Clay Dotson, who died at age 43 in state prison on November 16, filed a federal lawsuit last month against the Alabama Department of Corrections and others, saying his heart was missing when his remains were returned to his family.
Dotson’s family conducted a second autopsy and filed a lawsuit to find out why his heart was removed so it could be returned to them.
“Defendants’ outrageous and inexcusable mishandling of the deceased’s body amounts to a reprehensible violation of human dignity and common decency,” the lawsuit states.
Lauren Faraino, an attorney representing Dotson’s family, said in an email that the experience of several families shows that this is “absolutely part of a pattern.”
Faraino reports that Dotson’s family, in their search for information about what happened to his heart, discovered that other families had experienced similar things.
In another case, Charles Edward Singleton’s daughter, Charlene Drake, claimed her father’s body was missing all of his internal organs when it was returned in 2021. Court documents filed by Dotson’s family last week referenced Singleton’s body: his daughter wrote that her father’s body was delivered to a funeral home “without internal organs” after he died in custody in 2021.
A federal judge held a hearing on Dotson’s case last week, but it did not provide answers on the whereabouts of the heart.
